TOC 2011 Keynote Speakers

As the Editorial Director, International Digital Content at Barnes and Noble’s Digital Group, I am in charge of the team working on acquisition of international digital content. I also handle the relations with international corporations, publishers, cultural and governmental agencies. Previously, I was the Merchandising Manager in charge of eBooks, Nonfiction printed Books, and Libros en español at Barnes & Noble.com, where I launched both the eBooks Store and the Libros en español online division, for which I was also the Buyer.

I grew up in Buenos Aires, where I earned a degree in Communication Sciences and a Masters in Journalism, and went from reporter to senior editor in newspapers, magazines, TV news, and websites. In New York, I got a masters in Publishing at NYU, and became a book, ecommerce & digital business person. I live in Brooklyn with my husband, Brendan Borrell, and two formerly stray cats named Moses Katzestein and Hormiguita.

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers. Hosted by Joe Wikert.

Margaret AtwoodAuthor

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master’s degree from Radcliffe College.

Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary degrees. She is the author of more than thirty-five volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid’s Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood’s dystopic novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003. The Tent (mini-fictions) and Moral Disorder (short stories) both appeared in 2006. Her most recent volume of poetry, The Door, was published in 2007. Her non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, part of the Massey Lecture series, appeared in 2008, and her most recent novel, The Year of the Flood, in the autumn of 2009. Ms. Atwood’s work has been published in more than forty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian. In 2004 she co-invented the Long Pen TM.

"Publishing" originally meant simply to make public. That meaning, and the
processes and technologies by which "publishing" has taken place, has
changed radically over the years, and is in the process of changing yet
again. We are now in the midst of the largest
publishing changes and challenges since Gutenberg. How will they affect the
author? What tools are newly available to him/her?

Gus BalbontinGlobal Innovation Manager,Lonely Planet

Gus is a strategy and innovation expert. He specializes in leading complex cross-business transformation initiatives that require significant operational restructures with minimum disruption to the business. He has a knack for incubating and integrating new products, market opportunities, platforms and technologies into existing businesses. Gus is playing a lead role in Lonely Planet’s transformation from print publisher into a multiformat publisher.

In this presentation, Lonely Planet's Gus Balbontin shares stories from his company's digital hard knocks and wins, and offers some reasons why as important as change is, it's even more important not to lose sight of your core strengths in the process.

James BridleCreator,booktwo.org

James Bridle does things with books, mostly. With a background in both computing and traditional publishing, he attempts to bridge the gaps between technology and literature, whether that takes the form of writing about the publishing industry, consulting to leading international publishers, or actually being a publisher. James created Bookkake, a small publisher using new technologies to bring new life to independent publishing, and Bkkeepr, an attention data service for bibliophiles. He writes about books and the publishing industry at booktwo.org and runs a series of websites including Quietube, an accidental anti-censorship proxy for the Middle East. In 2009 he helped launch Enhanced Editions, the first ereading application with integrated audiobooks.

Paper-based literature is becoming digital, migrating from the page onto screens and the web. James will be talking about book guilt, the Open Bookmarks project, foam-phase literature and how publishers can reclaim reading.

Kate ElthamCEO,Queensland Writers Centre

Kate Eltham is the Chief Executive Officer of Queensland Writers Centre and founder of if:book Australia, a think-and-do tank exploring book futures. In 2009 she was named by The Australian newspaper as one of 10 Emerging Leaders of Culture.

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers. Hosted by Joe Wikert.

Jim FruchtermanFounder and CEO,Benetech

A technology entrepreneur, Jim Fruchterman is a former rocket scientist who has founded two of the foremost optical character recognition companies and developed successful social enterprises. Jim co-founded Calera Recognition Systems in 1982. Calera developed character recognition that allowed computers to read virtually all printed text.

In 1989, Jim founded Arkenstone, a nonprofit social enterprise, to produce reading machines for the disabled community based on the Calera technology. Following the sale of the Arkenstone product line in 2000, Jim used all the resulting capital to fund Benetech, with an explicit goal of using the power of technology to serve humanity.

Jim has also been active in public service, with two stints on U.S. federal advisory committees. In 2006, he received a MacArthur Fellowship. Jim was named an Outstanding Social Entrepreneur in 2003 by the Schwab Foundation and continues to participate in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Benetech received the Skoll Award for social entrepreneurship under Jim’s leadership. Jim also received the Robert F. Bray Award from the American Council of the Blind in recognition of his outstanding efforts to make literary works accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired.

Jim believes that technology is the ultimate leveler, allowing disadvantaged people to achieve more equality in society. “I’m an advance scout for social applications,” notes Jim. “I find exciting technology waiting to be turned into non-commercial tools for disadvantaged groups.”

Anna GerberCo-founder,Visual Editions

Anna Gerber co-founded and runs Visual Editions (publishers of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes) with Britt Iversen. Anna comes from Paris via Los Angeles and has been writing about, working in and teaching graphic design for the past ten years, first at Central Saint Martins and now at London College of Communication. She has an MA in Philosophy, but doesn’t use it all that often. She lives in Paddington with Nick and their daughter Bella.

We, Anna and Britt, are co-founders of London-based book publishing business, Visual Editions. We believe that books should be as visually interesting as the stories they tell and experiences they give. We call it visual writing. An our strap line is 'Great looking stories.'

Cheryl Goodman Director, Marketing ,Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Inc

Cheryl oversees global marketing and communications efforts, including analyst and media relations across international markets, is the division’s liaison with the publishing industry and provides strategic input into market research and product development strategies.

Prior to joining QMT, she managed Qualcomm’s industry analyst relations program and public relations efforts for Qualcomm’s FLO TV and FLO Technologies divisions. Prior to joining Qualcomm, Cheryl served as the director of public relations and marketing for start-up Lindows.com, creator of a Linux-based operating system, and also led public relations efforts at MP3.com. She has extensive experience in broadcast journalism, having served as the technology Web reporter for ABC affiliate KGTV and Web reporter for CBS affiliate KFMB.

Goodman is a frequent spokesperson for QMT: she has been quoted in multiple publications and has spoken at top tier industry events such as The Digital Publishing & Advertising Conference, the Magazine Publishers Association’s Dimensional to Digital, M-Publishing, and DEMO 2009. She also oversees QMT’s successful awards program, which includes honors such as the WSJ Innovation Award, PC Magazine Technical Excellence Award, EDN Innovation Award, Andrew Seybold Choice Award and finalist standing for the CES Innovation Awards and GSMA Global Mobile Awards.

Goodman attended San Diego State University, where she earned a bachelor’s in political science and television, new media and film. She was named 2010’s Marketing/Marcomm Leader of the Year by PR News. In 2004, she was nominated for PR Leader of the Year by T-Sector Magazine.

Theodore GrayCo-founder, Founder,Wolfram Research, Touch Press

Theodore Gray is an award-winning software developer, author, and popularizer of science. Having started out in chemistry, he joined Stephen Wolfram in 1987 in the creation of Mathematica. Gray pioneered the concept of Mathematica notebooks—which serve as the main interface to Mathematica, and have made possible the creation of millions of interactive computable documents. Ever since the founding of Wolfram Research, Gray has guided its user interface strategy, and has been responsible for a sequence of major innovations.

Over the years Gray has developed an independent interest in science writing and in communicating the excitement and importance of science to a wide audience. He is a Contributing Editor at Popular Science magazine, and has authored its Gray Matter column since 2003. The How 2.0 section containing Gray’s column won a National Magazine Award in 2005, and Gray’s column is a finalist for its own National Magazine Award for 2010.

Gray is the author of Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do at Home–But Probably Shouldn’t, and of the best selling coffee table book The Elements, A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe, now the groundbreaking first product of Touch Press. He is also the proprietor of periodictable.com and the creator of the iconic photographic periodic-table poster seen in universities, schools, museums, and on TV shows from MythBusters to Hannah Montana.

The Elements for iPad has been one of the most successful ebook titles for the iPad, despite being about a subject that frankly no one would think they are interested in before seeing it. We tried to build something pure and beautiful, with the guiding principle being WWHPD? (What Would Harry Potter Do?)

Ben HuhChief Cheezburger,I Can Has Cheezburger

Ben is a former journalist turned dot com entrepreneur who has a knack for
nailing the zeitgeist. He has been credited with bringing Internet memes to
the mainstream and popularizing Internet culture. The success of his
business is attributed to his knowledge of memes, viral content, and crowd
sourcing. Ben graduated with a BSJ from Northwestern University’s Medill
School of Journalism.

Ben Huh is the CEO and founder of Cheezburger Network, the Internet publisher best known for FAILS, LOLcats, and other funny memes. He is a former journalist turned dot com entrepreneur with a knack for nailing popular zeitgeist and has been credited with bringing Internet memes to the mainstream and popularizing Internet culture.

Britt IversenCo-founder,Visual Editions

Britt Iversen co-founded and runs Visual Editions (a company formed from the love of books and a mischievous desire to do things differently) with Anna Gerber. Britt is from Copenhagen and has been working in advertising, via brand communication and research, for fifteen years, the last nine years at Mother London. She lives in South London with Nigel and their two kids, Rasmus and Millie.

We, Anna and Britt, are co-founders of London-based book publishing business, Visual Editions. We believe that books should be as visually interesting as the stories they tell and experiences they give. We call it visual writing. An our strap line is 'Great looking stories.'

Kevin KellySenior Maverick,Wired

For 25 years Kevin Kelly has been a participant in, and reporter on, the culture of technology. Based in his studio in Pacifica, California, he immerses himself in the long-term trends and social consequences of technology. Kevin Kelly is currently Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He helped launch Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999. During Kelly’s tenure as editor at Wired, the magazine won two National Magazine Awards (the industry’s equivalent of two Oscars). He is currently editor and publisher of the popular Cool Tools, True Film, and Street Use websites. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers’ Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. A few years ago he started a scientific campaign to catalog all the living species of life on earth. This project has morphed into developing a web page for every species in an Encyclopedia of Life.

Kevin Kelly has authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy, and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control (called “required reading for all executives” by Fortune). In addition he writes for prominent publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Time, Harpers, Science, GQ, and Esquire. Earlier in life he was a photographer in remote parts of Asia (instead of going to college), publishing his photographs in national magazines and recently in the photo art book Asia Grace. Currently he is a charter board member of the Long Now Foundation which is building a monumental clock that will tick for 10,000 years.

In this talk Ben will go over a series of (surprising) observations backed by comprehensive data from the U.S. iTunes app store. He will present statistics and metrics that will help app sellers, marketers, and developers, understand recent dynamics in the U.S. app store. Along the way we'll uncover clues and strategies for boosting app downloads.

Brian O’LearyPrincipal,Magellan Media

Brian O’Leary is founder and principal of Magellan Media, a management consulting firm that works with publishers seeking support in content operations, benchmarking and financial analysis.

O’Leary writes extensively about issues affecting the publishing industry. With Hugh McGuire, he edited “Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto”, a collection of forward-looking essays on publishing that was published in three parts by O’Reilly Media.

O’Leary is also the author of a research report on the impact of free content and digital piracy on paid book sales, as well as the editor and primary contributor for a study of the use of XML in book publishing. Both reports were published by O’Reilly Media.

Before becoming a consultant, O’Leary served as senior VP and associate publisher with Hammond Inc., an internationally recognized geographic reference publisher. Responsible for database development, editorial content, production, and operations, he restructured editorial operations to benefit from the firm’s prior technology investments.

O’Leary came to Hammond after a 12-year career overseeing production and distribution operations at several of Time Inc.’s weekly magazines. He earned an A.B. in chemistry from Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Books, magazines and newspapers contain content, but they are no longer the primary way that people discover content. In a digital era, the "container-first" model strips metadata from content and makes discovery more costly and less likely. To compete, publishers must learn to start with context, preserve its links to content and create containers as the last step, not the first.

David "Skip" PrichardPresident & CEO,Ingram Content Group Inc.

Skip Prichard is President & Chief Executive Officer of Ingram Content Group Inc. Ingram Content Group provides books, music and media content to over 35,000 retailers, libraries, schools and distribution partners in over 200 countries. More than 21,000 publishers use Ingram’s fully integrated physical and digital solutions and programs to realize the full business potential of books. Under his leadership, Ingram Content Group has improved its financial position, expanded its international locations to continental Europe and Australia, strengthened its digital offerings and integrated its multiple companies and acquisitions into a unified service offering.

Mr. Prichard’s perspective as the leader of Ingram Content Group – the center hub between publishers, retailers and libraries – offers a unique view on the future of books and publishing. His views have been featured in print and online publications and broadcast media, including the BBC, The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Harvard Business Review, Information Today, The Bookseller, Publishers Weekly, Christian Retailing, Library Journal and others. He has spoken on this topic at conferences, including O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing, BookExpo America, PubWest, and the ECPA’s Executive Leadership Summit.

Prior to his appointment at Ingram Content Group, Mr. Prichard was President and Chief Executive Officer of ProQuest Information & Learning where he led ProQuest through a successful financial turnaround, achieving double-digit growth and returning the company to profitability. Earlier in his career, Mr. Prichard held a number of executive positions with LexisNexis, where as Vice President of corporate and federal markets he provided business information and risk management solutions to the largest global corporations.

The book industry is undergoing rapid changes, and the fallout is just beginning. Seismic industry changes always bring success and opportunity to some, transformation and consolidation to others, and failure to those who get left behind. At no time has publishing been in a similar crossroads, where both content format and the delivery methods are changing at the same time.

Scott RauguthDirector of Sales & Marketing,Precision Graphics

As Director of Sales & Marketing for Precision, I work with publishers to create engaging and pedagogically sound print and electronic products. Projects involve development and production of visual content, composition, and project management. I also direct our GrafixMD visual content management software, making digital art management easy and efficient.

I have worked in many positions for both trade and academic publishers prior to my current position, including Acquisitions VP, Editorial, Sales, Marketing and PR.

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers. Hosted by Joe Wikert.

Michael RiordanAssistant Professor,Rochester Institute of Technology

Michael Riordan is the Director and a founding member of the Open Publishing Lab at RIT. His research in the Lab centers on the production challenges of connecting content and, by extension, people.

Michael is also a full-time member of the RIT School of Print Media faculty where he teaches coursework relating to publishing production. Through his research, he works closely with publishers, print service providers and creative agencies to help improve their workflows and has worked with CGATS and standards organizations to develop quality assurance mechanisms to support the same. He presents regularly at industry events, has published several technical papers and served as co-editor for the Pocket Pal: A Graphic Arts Production Handbook. In 2008, Michael was also named the PGSF’s Educator of the Year.

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers. Hosted by Joe Wikert.

Steve RosenbaumFounder and CEO,Magnify.net

Steven Rosenbaum is an entrepreneur, author, and curator. He is the founder and CEO of the web’s largest Video Curation Platform, Magnify.net.
Rosenbaum is known as the father of user-generated video, having created MTV’s groundbreaking UGC series MTV UNfiltered, a pre-web television project that handed cameras to young storytellers. Since that time he has built a career finding, organizing, and curating first-person storytelling.

Rosenbaum’s work as an Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker includes his film chronicling 9/11 “7 Days In September.” That film gathered more than 500 hours of video around 9/11 – creating a curated journey through the eyes of 28 filmmakers and citizen storytellers. The result was the curation of the world’s largest collection of 9/11 videos: The CameraPlanet Archive which Rosenbaum and producing partner Pamela Yoder donated to the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum. His film work includes long form documentary projects for National Geographic, HBO, CNN, MSNBC, Discovery, A&E, and The History Channel.

Mr. Rosenberg is Vice President of Business Development and Content Acquisition for Copia Interactive – the first social e-reading platform.

At the forefront of ebooks and digital content for more than a decade, Sol Rosenberg is a leading expert in the world of ebooks, digital publishing & marketing strategies.

He was a co-founder of the ebook pioneer Versaware and has helped major publishers with their digital initiatives – companies like McGraw-Hill, Cengage, Taylor & Francis, Simon & Schuster, Jones & Bartlett, Encyclopedia Britannica and many others.

This blending of communications and high-technology began when Sol created the first nationally-syndicated computer-focused radio show. He also introduced the first consumer computer with a built-in CD-ROM, was a pioneer in multimedia and emerging digital technologies and then active in the sphere of digital content for global publishers.

For the last few years, Tools of Change conference has certainly set the stage for the future of publishing. The focus of the conference has been mostly as to the mechanics -– what to create, how to create it, what new forms of content will be made, how will people use the new content, new experiments in content types, etc. We would like to explore the next phase...

Kathy SierraAuthor, Blogger,SeriousPony

Kathy Sierra worked as a game programmer, interaction designer, and learning specialist (Sun Microsystems, UCLA Extension) before creating the best-selling Head First series for O’Reilly. She was the original creator of one of the largest software developer communities, javaranch.com.

Charles StackFounder & CEO,Sideways

Charles Stack is a successful, serial entrepreneur who launched the first online bookstore – Books.com – in 1992. Charles pioneered most of the features we now take for granted in today’s internet retailers. Books.com offered millions of books, comprehensive searching, collaborative recommendations (patented), shopping carts, price comparisons (patented), real-time credit card processing, affiliate programs, and he introduced many other now standard internet retailing concepts. Books.com was acquired by CUC in early 1996 and subsequently by Barnes & Noble in 1998.

At CUC Charles designed and launched groundbreaking sites for online music sales, movies, gifts, computer software, and games.

In 1998, Charles founded Flashline to address the new opportunity in software components and web services. After navigating Flashline through the technology meltdown of 2001-2003, Charles focused the company on the expanding web services management market and created the leading web services repository solution. BEA acquired Flashline in 2006. The Flashline product was the fastest growing piece of BEA’s most important product line, Aqualogic, at the time of BEA’s acquisition by Oracle in May 2008.

With Sideways, Charles is on a mission to evolve the publishing industry and take storytelling to the next level.

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers. Hosted by Joe Wikert.

Walter WalkerDirector of Publishing Services,codeMantra LLC

Walter heads up codeMantra’s Publishing Services Division. He has more than 18 years of commercial publishing experience, having held VP Sales & Marketing positions at Simon & Schuster, Inc. and marketing and public relations positions with Bantam Doubleday Dell and McClelland & Stewart (both now part of Random House). Walter started his career in digital publishing in 2000, with a progressive and optimistic start-up offering Digital Rights Management solutions. He then ventured into industrial publishing, where he marketed and sold high-end dynamic enterprise publishing (DEP) solutions for Advent 3B2, Arbortext and PTC Inc. Walter’s extensive understanding of publishing processes and the expanding market for digital content supports a practical assessment of where, and how, XML technologies can best be applied.

Joe WikertGeneral Manager & Publisher,O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Joe Wikert is a publishing executive with 20+ years of industry experience. He is General Manager & Publisher at O’Reilly Media, Inc., where he manages the sales and editorial groups. Joe also serves as co-chair for O’Reilly’s Tools of Change (TOC) conference. Prior to joining O’Reilly he was a Vice President and Executive Publisher in the Professional/Trade division of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and had management responsibility for the WROX and Sybex imprints. Joe regularly shares his publishing industry thoughts and outlook on
his Publishing 2020 blog. He is also the proud owner of an Amazon Kindle and blogs about that experience on his Kindleville blog.

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers. Hosted by Joe Wikert.